When I was eleven years old, I used to play Top Trumps. The card game with lots of data on a specific subject (I used to play with Cars, but there was football, pop stars, anything really) where you would win cards from your opponent and build up your collection of useless bits of cards with a picture of a Ferrari F40 and information on its horsepower, price, exclusivity and all sorts of other meaningless technical knowledge. I remember loving playing the game and building up huge pack of car cards.
And now The Wine Adventurer, through The Waiters Friend company, has released “Wine Trumps”, taking this playground card game and bringing it up an age group with wine as the subject. The statistics given are “Still drinking from” (older is better), “Average price per bottle” (higher wins), “Rarity” (Rarer is better), “Established” (older is better) “Vineyard size” and “Production” (larger is better – why I am not certain – we changed it that smaller was better) as it is more exclusive!
I’ll admit, I started off with a severely cynical view of this, thinking that it would be another idea coming from someone who fancies making a quick buck and that it is going to fail tremendously. But I gave it a go.
The first few cards we played were full of mocking about how silly this game was. However, we rapidly got hooked. Competitive urges came to the fore, we were arguing how Cheval Blanc’s production of 72,000 bottles was supposed to be better than DRC’s Romanee Conti’s mere 5,400 and how Henschke’s Hill of Grace was drinkable from the 1970’s and therefore beat Krug Clos d’Ambonnay that is only drinkable from the 1990’s, despite the fact that the first vintage of this wine was in 1995!
This is a generational game. Adults (and when I say that, I mean adult men) who grew up playing Top Trumps and who are now wine buffs will no doubt buy one of these packs of cards, or get given one of these games for Christmas, and they will secretly enjoy battling their Penfolds Grange against their pal’s (or child who has been forced to play the game) Trimbach Clos St Hune.
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